


Time and Space to Study

by thetransgirlwhoneverwas



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 16:48:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28798623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thetransgirlwhoneverwas/pseuds/thetransgirlwhoneverwas
Summary: Bill Potts has a paper due for her personal tutor. Bill Potts has a study in which to finish her paper due for her personal tutor. Bill Potts has a thousand distractions attracting her attention away from the paper due for her personal tutor. Those distractions include her personal tutor.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	Time and Space to Study

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FezofRassilon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FezofRassilon/gifts).



The sounds of jubilation and less-than-sober celebration drifted casually through the open window and over to Bill Potts, who was trying to be as unreceptive to the noise as possible. She got up and closed the window, walking quickly back over to her chair and set her eyes on the paper again. No sooner had she done so than her mind began to wander to places she had never been and barely dreamed about. The world, the universe, danced in her imagination, endless and free and so much more than anything she had ever-

She blinked, then stood up and opened the window again. She would just have to ignore the sounds of the other students from outside. This office was wonderful, she loved it, it had an incredibly homely feel to it, especially when sharing it with other people. But alone, the office seemed out of time. Isolated from the rest of existence. As if drifting through eternity entirely by itself. Bill needed the open window, the slightly cold rush of air, and the distracting but familiar sounds of the university bustling, or partying, or sleeping, just existing in the same space and time as her. Without some outside influence to keep her anchored to it, she could get lost in this office. Bill had no doubt that only part of that feeling was the office itself. The rest of it was the influence of the entirely unfitting and incongruous large blue box sat in the corner of the room. Bill risked a second’s glance at it. It didn’t glance back. Maybe.

The sounds kept coming through, in waves of cheers and raucous laughter, and the more she heard them the more she regretted not being part of it. She shook her head and reminded herself why that would have been a bad thing. It was just a party. The other students threw those near constantly, and she was part of a vast majority of them. But tonight she couldn’t. Tonight she was busy. She had an assignment to finish for her personal tutor.

Bill’s priorities had always been getting from one day to the next, finding a more interesting and fulfilling job than serving chips, finding somewhere to settle down, and a lovely woman to settle down with. Aspiration had never been a strange word to her, but the high standards had always been most assuredly out of her reach. Certainly she never would have imagined writing a paper on the third law of thermodynamics and how it related to potential faster-than-light travel. Nor would she have known or cared about what the third law of thermodynamics even was. But the Doctor had changed her perspective on that. He had changed her perspective on a lot of things. Her life couldn’t be anything but better for it.

He had told her that if she ever received any grade lower than top marks, he would stop being her personal tutor and she would be back to her old life. It was, of course, a load of rubbish. She didn’t believe a word of it. For as grumpy and uncaring as the Doctor loved to portray himself, that was only the very thinnest of top layers to his personality. The rest was indescribably soft. Not in a weak or frail way, despite his apparent age - weak and frail were the last words Bill would ever use to describe him - but beneath his paper-thin veneer of abrasive apathy, he was without a doubt the most caring and supportive person Bill had ever met. Like he had made it his lifelong mission to be a doting grandfather to literally the entire planet. No, she knew he would absolutely not kick her out if she got less than top marks. He would probably be more likely to talk to the professor who graded the paper and explain exactly why they were wrong to not give her top marks while making them reevaluate their entire knowledge of their own subject. He would absolutely not kick her out if she didn’t get top marks. She would still get top marks though. Even though he would never consider it so, she would feel like she’d let him down, and Bill Potts had promised herself she would not let him down.

Therefore, instead of attending a party with the other students of St. Luke’s University, she was sitting in an ancient timeless office, next to an even older blue box, and writing a paper on the third law of thermodynamics and how it related to faster-than-light travel. And she was enjoying every second of it.

The door handle turning without so much as a knock on the door brought Bill’s mind away from faster-than-light travel again and back into the office. The door swung open and a bald head in a bright yellow beanie that somehow both suited and did not suit the head poked into the room.

“Have you seen him?” asked Nardole, not even needing to qualify who “him” was. Bill shook her head.

“Haven’t seen him all evening,” she replied. “Is he in trouble?”

“Always,” Nardole said in that tone of voice he normally had when talking about the Doctor, like he wanted to be annoyed at him for breaking the rules but he hadn’t quite broken the rules quite hard enough yet. The rest of his body followed him into the room and he performed a routine check of all the hiding places frequented by the Doctor. Underneath the desk. Behind the curtains. In the closet. Finally he rounded onto the blue box.

“Is he in here?” he asked Bill. “He’s not supposed to be in here.”

“I haven’t seen him,” Bill replied truthfully. She had asked to use this office to write her paper about three hours ago, and the Doctor had said yes, before leaving, saying he had something to do which Bill hadn’t bothered to question. She hadn’t seen him since.

“Hmm,” Nardole frowned, not convinced that the blue box was not hiding his...Bill again questioned what Nardole was to the Doctor. His boss? His caretaker? His frustrated friend? It didn’t matter at the moment. 

“Hmm,” Nardole examined each of the two sides of the box visible without demolishing a wall first. 

“Hmm,” he poked at it, as if trying to make sure it was actually there. 

“Hmm,” he peered through the keyhole and tried pushing the door open, to no avail. 

“Hmm,” he peered through the keyhole again.

“Seriously, what’s wrong?” Bill asked. “Has he gotten himself in danger? Can I help?”

“I’m supposed to be keeping an eye on him,” Nardole didn’t tear his gaze away from his attempts to see through the keyhole of the blue box. “He has an uncanny ability to disappear.”

“Yeah he does,” Bill laughed. The Doctor was an expert at avoiding Nardole’s attempts to keep his feet on the ground and head out of the clouds.

“If you see him, let me know,” he said.

“I will,” Bill lied, and Nardole walked out of the door without another word. Uncharacteristic as it was, Bill put it out of her mind as she got up and closed the door, walking back to her seat and letting her mind return to thermodynamics. It wasn’t long before the door opened again.

“Bill,” the Doctor greeted her. “Good to see you, how are you doing? How’s the, uh, student life going?”

“Still doing the paper,” Bill answered, her thoughts alternating between glad to see him and wanting to just get this paper done.

“Good, good,” the Doctor definitely did not respond to her answer as he stared at his own blue box in barely hidden awe, as if he had never seen it before.

“You okay Doctor?” Bill asked him. “That’s still the TARDIS, hasn’t changed in the slightest.”

“Oh, I know, I know,” the Doctor scrambled to explain. “I just...sometimes marvel at what a magnificent thing it is, you know?”

Bill nodded her agreement at him, although he didn’t see it. The TARDIS was indeed wonderful. She had shown them both such incredible things, lifted Bill’s thoughts away from the mundane and towards the cosmic, the eternal. Brought them both on adventures she couldn’t have imagined and let her soar among the stars of history and forever. The Doctor may have changed her perspective on her life, but the TARDIS had shown her exactly how wide her perspective was capable of being.

“Anyway, enjoy your thing,” the Doctor stammered and rushed out of the door, not closing it behind him.

Bill’s memory suddenly jogged itself back to the previous conversation: “oh, Doctor, Nardole was looking for you!” she shouted down the hallway, although he was definitely far enough away by now that he did not hear her. Regardless, with another sigh, she stood up again and walked over to close the door before trying to go back to thermodynamics once again.

The party continued outside, although as the time drifted onwards it drifted away from the university and towards the indoors, either in one of the nightclubs of the city or inside the student’s own homes and accommodations, and over the next hour or two the noise died down until Bill could no longer hear it, content with the gentle whistling of the wind outside the still open window. The cool breeze drifted into the room, colder than it was before as the night drew on, but the warmth of the office stayed in the office, wrapping Bill in comfort, as if the office and the blue box themselves were determined to keep Bill on task. She silently thanked them for their success as she flew through the paper, making points and understanding details that she didn’t even realise she knew until she was writing it down and explaining exactly why and how it worked. She reached such a state of blissful knowledge and productivity that she didn’t even mind when there came a knock on the door, though it did not open until she called “yeah?” to whoever was waiting outside.

The same bright yellow beanie on top of the same bald head poked into the doorway. “Oh, Bill! You’re up late! Getting some work done?”

“Yep,” Bill explained. “Thermodynamics and space travel.”

“Oh, interesting subject,” Nardole responded, walking over to the desk she was working at. Bill for a second was worried that he was going to start reading over her shoulder, but instead he just reached over and retrieved one of the Doctor’s sonic screwdrivers from the desktop. “Sorry to get in your way, I need one of these. Some odd goings on happening outside.”

“What kind of goings on?” Bill asked. “Anything you need a hand with?”

“Nope, I think I should be fine,” Nardole smiled to thank her for the offer, but dismissed it. “Nothing major. I detected something unusual somewhere in the university grounds but I couldn’t see anything. Just need to give it a check, make sure the Doctor hasn’t brought anything dangerous onto the grounds.”

Bill smiled at that. It was something of a habit for the Doctor to accidentally bring dangerous things to the university. Even Nardole himself could be considered one of them, if she believed his own descriptions of himself.

“You find the Doctor in the end?” she asked.

“Eh?” Nardole questioned. “No idea where he is, haven’t seen him all day to be honest. I’m sure it’s fine.”

“But earlier you…” Bill started, but put it out of her mind. She had different things to focus on, after all. “Whatever, let me know if you need anything.”

“Thanks Bill,” Nardole said as he left, patting the blue box on the way out as if to check that it was really there. 

“Good luck!” he said, and Bill stood up from her chair to close the door behind him, but Nardole did it himself as he left. Bill sat back down again, shrugging to herself, and turned her attention back to the paper she was getting close to finishing up.

Some time later, there came another knock on the door, and when Bill called the knocker in, the door swung open once again and the Doctor came striding in once more.

“Good evening Bill,” he greeted her, properly this time.

“Good evening Doctor,” she smiled back.

“How’s the paper going? Is it making sense? Anything you don’t understand?” he asked in quick succession, not giving her enough time to answer, but pausing after the third question.

“I think I’m good,” Bill reassured him. “I’m most of the way through and I haven’t run into anything too difficult yet.”

“Excellent,” the Doctor beamed. “Thermodynamics and space travel, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Bill nodded. “I would have had no idea what it meant a couple months ago but I’m getting it. It makes sense.”

“Proud of you, Bill,” he said, and Bill felt a warmth quite unlike what the office was provided, coming from inside, and couldn’t stop herself from smiling ear to ear. Hearing those words from him always made her feel better about life, no matter what kind of mood she was in when they came.

“Anyway, I thought I’d check up, make sure you’re doing okay,” the Doctor said, reaching over and taking another sonic screwdriver from the desk. “Also I needed one of these. Some strange signal coming from the Vault that I need to check out.”

Something else strange happening, Bill thought to herself. Just like Nardole was apparently investigating. “You sure you don’t need a hand?”

“Oh, no no no no, don’t worry yourself Bill,” the Doctor shook his head vigorously and gestured to Bill’s paper. “This is more important, I can handle this myself. It’s most likely nothing, just a faulty perception filter or something, I’ll sort it. Call me if you need any help with the paper. “

“And, yeah, call me if you need any help with the, uh, thing,” Bill responded as the Doctor strode off towards the door. He smiled and winked at her as he closed the door behind him.

Bill continued to write her paper, the words flowing from her mind to her hand, through her pen and onto the paper. After pressing the pen down onto the last full stop, dotting all of the i’s and crossing all of the t’s, she read it through and was momentarily surprised by how much sense it made. Initially she wrote it off as a fluke, as she normally did, but stopped herself. It wasn’t a fluke, and her record of full marks on all of her papers proved that. She could have put it down to the Doctor’s tutoring, but the truth was that he was only helping her really apply herself. As she received more and more high scores on more and more papers, Bill realised that slowly but surely, she had stopped putting herself down so much. She really was becoming more confident in herself. She really was feeling her own potential.

As she finished reading, the door swung open again, un-knocked on, and the Doctor strode in once more. Before Bill had a chance to say anything to him, however, he rounded on her.

“I heard that Nardole is looking for me,” he demanded in a tone that he had never taken with Bill before and put her immediately on the proverbial back foot. “Where is he?”

“I-I dunno,” Bill stammered. “He said he was looking for some unusual thing on the grounds?”

“Oh, no no no,” the Doctor immediately lost confidence and started pacing back and forth, fidgeting in a way that Bill had never seen him do before. 

“Wait, how did you know?” Bill asked, immediately retrieving her own confidence. “Who told you that Nardole was after you?”

“Oh, it’s all going wrong,” he whined. “Ugh, if only I could use this damn TARDIS thing. Would have been much more convenient and easy.”

“You...can use the TARDIS though,” Bill countered. “Or, at least, the Doctor can.”

“The Doctor…” mused the person who sounded like the Doctor, and looked like the Doctor, but was most definitely not the Doctor. “Yes, I can make the Doctor do it. I can…” he stopped as he heard footsteps coming down the hallway. He shot a panicked look at Bill, before his features warped and changed before her eyes, and the image of the Doctor morphed into that of Nardole, yellow beanie and all.

“Act natural, or I’ll...um, I’ll,” he started to try at a threat, but ran out of time before the Doctor arrived in the room.

“Nardole!” he greeted cheerfully. “Haven’t seen you all day! Anyway, Bill,” he turned towards her. “I checked the signal again and it seems to have moved to this office.”

“Yeah, I think it might have,” Bill nodded towards the person pretending to be Nardole, who stayed silent save for an expression comparable to a goldfish taken out of water. The Doctor either ignored or didn’t notice Bill’s obvious hint.

“I think I’ve actually been detecting a biological waveform,” the Doctor explained. “Something like a teleporter, or a-”

“Shapeshifter,” interrupted Nardole - the real Nardole, dressed in the same clothes and yellow beanie as the pretend Nardole, now entering the room. 

“Oh, no, two Nardoles,” the Doctor despaired. “Wait, is one of you the happy one and the other the grumpy one? Can I get rid of the grumpy one? He’s no fun.”

“That isn’t me, Doctor, obviously,” Nardole rolled his eyes so hard Bill could see it from across the room. He addressed his own imposter. “Take that hat off, you make it look silly on me.”

The imposter made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a whimper, and Nardole’s features faded from him, to be replaced by a hairless face that was thin, grey, and aggressive nondescript.

“Now then,” Nardole began to interrogate him. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

“Also why have you been pretending to be the Doctor and Nardole?” Bill joined in.

“My name is Barry,” the shapeshifter answered in his own, nasally voice.

“Barry?” Bill questioned the mundane name.

“Yeah, Barry,” the shapeshifter repeated, offering no explanation. “I was offered a lot of money to break into the Vault under St. Luke’s University and retrieve whatever’s inside. I didn’t ask any more questions. I thought I could trick one of you into letting me in. But now, I’ll have to force it.” He stopped, and took a deep breath, clearly trying to psyche himself up, an attempt that Bill knew failed the second he started talking again. “Now, l-l-let me into the Vault or, or I’ll, uh...shoot...you…? Please?”

“Shoot us?” the Doctor asked.

“Yes,” Barry tried to sound confident and intimidating. It did not work.

“With the gun you don’t have?” Bill asked.

“...yes,” Barry said weakly.

“In the vital organs I don’t have?” Nardole added.

“...yes,” Barry squeaked.

“Okay,” the Doctor said.

“Eh?” Barry asked.

“Eh? Nardole asked.

“Eh?” Bill asked.

“Sure, I’ll let you into the Vault,” the Doctor repeated brightly. “Follow me!”

“Doctor,” Nardole said in a warning tone, but the Doctor ignored him and took off down the hallway at a brisk walk. Bill, Nardole and Barry stood nonplussed for a moment, but at the Doctor’s distant urging of “well come on then!” they shrugged and followed.

The Doctor led them through the halls of the university, down several flights of stairs. As they descended the light faded, the air grew more musty and harder to breathe, and Barry sneezed several times in quick succession as they did. Eventually the carved wood of the old university building faded and was replaced by the gleaming metal of the even older basement containing the dreaded Vault. The four of them stopped outside of the huge doors, lights flashing their continued service in keeping the locks secure, containing whatever was inside away from the life outside it so threatened.

“Go on in,” the Doctor offered, gesturing for Barry to enter as he pressed a few buttons and zapped his sonic screwdriver around a bit.

“This is a very bad idea Doctor,” Nardole warned, but the Doctor waved him off.

“It’s fine,” the Doctor insisted as the doors slid open with an ominous and threatening hiss. “Go on, go in Barry.”

Barry nervously looked inside, then swallowed hard and walked in. Bill was tempted to look in after him, catch a precious glimpse of what the Doctor was holding in the Vault, what was so important that he was supposed to be staying here for one thousand years to guard. But as the doors started to slide closed, she decided it would be best not to. Curious as she was, this was one of the rare things she decided she was better off not knowing about.

“Do you know what you’ve done, Doctor?” Nardole rounded on him now. “This could be disastrous for everything, the entire universe. If he releases h-”

Nardole was interrupted by the sound of panicked and desperate knocking from the other side of the Vault door. The Doctor simply waggled his impressive eyebrows at Nardole and waved his screwdriver around again. The door slid open once more, and less than fifteen seconds after he had entered, Barry the shapeshifter, hired to break into the Vault, walked out as briskly as his legs could carry him. He said nothing as he strode past Bill, Nardole, and the Doctor, and up the stairs that had brought him down to the Vault.

The group followed him, Bill growing more and more curious if he had taken anything out of the Vault he was clearly so eager to escape. Still, Barry said nothing as they followed him back into the university building. He sped up to a jog as they approached the Doctor’s office and Bill and the others followed suit, matching his speed. He jogged out of the university building, only getting lost once or twice along the way. Finally finding the exit, he ran out into the night. It was now almost pitch dark, with no students to be seen or heard, as Barry rushed towards one of the large fields on the grounds, pressing a button on his wrist as he did. As Bill and the others ran just behind him, she saw a small, somewhat dingy and run down spaceship wobble into view as a cloaking device deactivated and a door opened on the top of it. Barry climbed in, tripping in his rush, and strapped himself into the pilot’s seat. He turned once more towards the Doctor.

“You need to put a warning on that thing!” he shouted indignantly, and the cockpit closed around him. Without fanfare, the ship sputtered to a start, lifted jerkily off of the ground, and coughed it’s way into the sky, disappearing into the clouds and stars and the great unknown of space.

“What was that about?” Bill turned back to the Doctor, but he just waggled his eyebrows at her again.

“This isn’t over, not by a long way,” Nardole said darkly. “He said someone hired him, which means that somebody knows about the Vault and what’s inside. Even if he wasn’t up to it, they’ll probably send someone else. I’m going to have to look into this and make sure we’re not in danger. Earth may not be safe anymore.” With that, he strode off towards the building again, trying to look dignified and serious despite his yellow beanie.

The Doctor just shrugged. “Well, anyway, how’s your paper going?” he asked.

“Um, it’s finished, but…” Bill trailed off.

“That’s good! Excellent! But what?” the Doctor asked.

“What if he’s right, you know?” she worried. “If someone knows about the Vault and wants whatever’s in it enough to hire someone to break in, what if we’re not safe? What if someone else comes to get it? Someone who knows what they’re doing?”

“Bill, you don’t have to worry about that,” the Doctor said in a tone that was probably meant to be reassuring, but wasn’t. “There’s nothing to be concerned about.”

“But what if the person who hired that guy-”

“I hired him,” the Doctor interrupted, stopping Bill’s rapidly spiralling thought process in its tracks.

“You what.”

“I hired him,” the Doctor explained. “To break into the Vault. So, you see, there’s no danger.”

“...why did you hire someone to break into your own Vault?” Bill demanded, incredulous. “Even if you knew he couldn’t do it, why would you do that?”

“Well, Nardole’s been working so hard lately,” the Doctor explained himself quickly with almost very little sarcasm in his voice. “He’s been doing such a good job guarding me while I guard the Vault, and he does love his job and making sure it’s safe so much. So I thought I’d give him something to do. You know, so he didn’t get bored.”

“And was that the only reason?” Bill asked, raising her own eyebrow, which was not quite as ample as the Doctor’s, but did the trick regardless.

“Well,” the Doctor’s gaze awkwardly shifted. “The more focused Nardole is on investigating a false lead, the less attention he’s going to be paying if we were to, say, take the TARDIS out for a brief field trip every now and then. Right?”

“So you hired someone to break into your own Vault.”

“Yes.”

“So that Nardole would investigate who hired them.”

“That’s right.”

“So he’d be less likely to notice you absconding with the TARDIS.”

“Correct.”

“And me.”

“And you,” he confirmed.

“You know he’s gonna find out it was you, right?” Bill asked. “Like, he’s gonna know it was you and he’s not gonna be happy.”

“Probably,” the Doctor shrugged. “But that’s a problem for the Doctor of tomorrow. And he’s useless, never gives me any advice or lottery tickets. He could do with a good kick up the backside.”

Bill lost her composure and started laughing. Once she did, the Doctor started as well, and once both of them were laughing neither of them could stop. Eventually Bill stopped laughing quite so hard and pulled the Doctor into a sideways hug. He raised his arms like he didn’t know what to do with them, but eventually settled on hugging her back with one of them. Bill and the Doctor looked upwards to the stars where they could still just about see the light from Barry’s excuse for a spaceship sputtering out of the atmosphere.

“Thank you, Doctor,” Bill smiled.

“For what?” he asked.

“Everything.”


End file.
